from very different worlds,” Michael says carefully.
“And? What does that mean?”
“I think he struggled with seeing us together.” Michael sighs. “I struggle with that myself.”
“We can be together. It’s not about meshing your world and my world,” Jordana says urgently. “It’s about creating a new world for the two of us, and that’s something we can do. Something we will do.” She smiles and snuggles into his shoulder. “Just you and me,” she says. “Living somewhere else. Somewhere where we can start afresh.”
Jordana is convinced this is more than an affair and she is spending more and more time talking of the future, of the world they will create together. She is insistent that this must be more because that seems to be the only way she can justify it. If this were just an affair she would not be doing it . . . but this? Michael? This is true love. This is about soulmates.
Little does she realize that everyone who has an affair tries to justify it in the same way.
Today Richard is playing in a tennis match. He collected Jess last night and brought her back to the house. When Carrie came out of the kitchen where she had been cooking macaroni and cheese—Jess’s favorite—and said hello, Jess just looked at her, then shot her father an evil glare and ran upstairs to her bedroom without saying anything.
“Should I go up?” Carrie asked Richard, standing awkwardly in the hallway listening to the bedroom door slam as Jess threw herself on the bed, wailing like a four-year-old.
“No,” Richard said. “Let’s just leave her. She has to learn. You are part of my life now, and she’s going to have to get used to you being here.”
After a while, as the wailing grew louder, he looked worriedly up the stairs. “Jesus,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what to do about this. I think I should go up.”
“Don’t.” Carrie lay a hand on his arm. “I think she does this for your attention. You go up and she gets exactly what she wants. Leave her. Let her calm down by herself.”
“What if she can’t?”
“She’s thirteen years old,” Carrie said with a smile. “Of course she can.” But she wasn’t sure.
When no one went upstairs to check on her, Jess came stomping downstairs, collapsing on the sofa with her arms crossed, shooting evil squinty looks at Carrie, who tried to ignore her. Despite feeling almost crippled with anxiety, with wanting Richard to step in to stop this behavior, she acted as if everything were normal, and Richard eventually took Jess outside to talk to her.
Carrie couldn’t make out all the words, but weeping and wailing soon gave way to normal conversation, and when they both came back in Richard looked exhausted, but relieved.
“I’m sorry,” Jess said, coming back in, looking at Carrie with such sad eyes that Carrie flung her arms around her and gave her a huge hug.
“It’s okay,” Carrie said, stepping back to look in Jess’ s eyes. “I understand. How about tomorrow, while Dad’s playing tennis, you and I go shopping?”
“Really?” Jess’ s eyes opened wide with delight. Money was always tight at home now, and Mom never took her shopping anymore, she was too busy working or she didn’t have the money, and she never wanted to take Jess to the stores Jess wanted to shop at anyway, she wanted Jess to still dress like a little girl.
“I thought maybe we could go to Kool Klothes, or Claire’s. Have a girls’ day. What do you think?”
“I’d love to,” Jess said, so happy and so light that Carrie found it impossible to reconcile this delightful child with the screaming monster of a few minutes ago.
Maybe this is the beginning of a new leaf, she thinks. Maybe a girls’ day is just what they need.
“I can’t help it, you know,” Jess says to Carrie as they sit in the coffee shop, Jess with a large hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream, and a chocolate-glazed doughnut (her mother would never let her eat this much at the coffee shop—if she was with her mother she might get a bottle of vitamin water and a bagel, so this is much more fun). “I hate it when I scream like that but it feels like a volcano exploding inside me and like I haven’t got any choice but to let it out.”
“I understand.” Tears well up in Carrie’s eyes. She feels so grateful that this child is confiding in her,